As spring moves into summer here in Lancashire we get two glorious golden shows in the fields and meadows around. 
First it’s the turn of the Dandelion popping up almost overnight, bursting into bloom for a few days, transforming into balls of seeds that explode into a passing breeze.
The Dandelion is followed by the Buttercup. A different golden glow spreading across the open fields thousands upon thousands of them.
I remember the times as a child when we used to pick the Buttercups and hold them under our chins to see if we loved butter. We never noticed that the result was always the same. We used to blow the Dandelion heads pretending to tell the time – blow, one o’clock, blow, two o’clock.
Later on the buttercups are joined in the fields by the tall grasses and they dance together in the passing wind. In teams they sway from side to side making patterns in the meadow their heads swaying around like a merry drunk.
Out in the open countryside these bringers of spring and summer colour are gloriously at home and in their place.
In my garden it’s a different matter, here they are not fabulous meadow flowers, here they are weeds.
My garden isn’t a meadow, my garden is my garden. This is not the place for the Dandelion or the Buttercup, but that doesn’t stop them trying. The Dandelion still thinks that the gap between the paving is a good place to grow, the Buttercup feels that same about my lawn. Here they don’t grow to anything like their full potential, here in my garden they are mutants stood on or cut down. They are disfigured by the restrictions that I place upon them, or the environment that they have chosen. The only thing that can be done with them is to cut them out and remove them.
The plants are exactly the same – it’s the place that has changed.
So many times in my own life I’ve been in the wrong place, sometimes physically, but also mentally and spiritually. I’ve been in the place of restriction or the place where I have been cut down. I’ve placed myself in a garden when I should have been in the open fields.
We aren’t plants growing wherever the seed landed, we have the blessing of choice. We can choose where we are going to grow and if we make the wrong choice we can change to another place. Sometimes we need the help of a higher power to move us, but the choice is ours to make.
In some areas of my life I currently feel like I have moved into a place of restriction and I need to do something about it. There’s no point in me sitting here complaining about it I need to do something, I can make the change.
Other areas of my life feel like they were made for me and the remarkable thing is that many of these places are not the places I would have chosen if it weren’t for the lessons that I learnt in the places of constraint. So even in that place there are lessons to be learnt.
The Dandelion and the Buttercup are both wonderful flowers but they need to be in their place, and so do we.
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Graham Chastney 